


Transforming the Demon

by yourlibrarian



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Essays, Gen, Meta, Season/Series 07, Souled Vampire(s), Transformation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-28
Updated: 2016-08-30
Packaged: 2018-08-11 11:27:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7889878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourlibrarian/pseuds/yourlibrarian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I was considering something I mentioned in <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/6833830">a discussion about</a> "This is the Picture", which was the repeated use of young women as mentally ill or institutionalized in Joss Whedon's work and how Spike was a rare male recurring character who was shown in the same way.  That led me to thinking more about his ensoulment, duality in the Buffyverse, and the larger forces at play in the final seasons of Buffy and Angel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Getting a Soul

There has been, in Buffy fandom, a vigorous debate about what the writers intended to do at the end of S6 with Spike's storyline. Was he always intended to get his soul? The official story is yes but there has always been doubt on this topic. And I'm not sure why because, to my eyes, nothing else really made any sense.

I'll be relatively brief about this because my real interest in this topic lies elsewhere. Given the dialogue and actions Spike takes in that final S6 arc, it seems to me there are four possible options for what he's going to do. He's either:

a) Going to try and kill the Slayer  
b) Going to get his chip removed  
c) Going to get her out of system so as to leave her and Sunnydale forever  
d) Get his soul  
e) Some combo of the above.

Out of all of these if we disbelieve (d) then (a) seems the seems a logical action given his dialogue. He's tried before and he may figure he needs some really powerful magic to do so given how many have tried and failed. 

It does not, however, fit his character very well. When he's first introduced, Angel testifies to how relentless Spike is when he's focused on something. It's hard to believe he's really given up on trying to win her. He has, though, shown himself to be obsessed with Slayers. He has killed two of them with nothing more than "fists and fangs" and he knows Buffy better than any of them. While he might recognize the need for more firepower and some aces up his sleeves, it's hard to believe he'd ever outsource that job to someone else or do it by remote control.

The other thing is that Spike has always warned against magic and, however biased he was during Angel's activities in S2, he's been fairly consistent about being more likely to mock mystical mumbo jumbo than put himself on the line for some magic mojo. And let's not forget he has some serious trials to go through in which he could die to get whatever it is he wants from the cave demon. So I can't see him utilizing that option if he had other choices.

So we move on to option (b). His journey and trials seem like overkill for the chip. Sure he's going to have some trouble convincing a neurosurgeon to de-chip him but let's face it, he half-assed it last time. Clearly he could have gone to L.A. and had demon surgeons work on him, if not found a bribable doctor. After all, humans put it in him and in S7 they remove it without much difficulty, so this wasn't the sort of hurdle that required this kind of journey.

If I were going for an alternate possibility it would have been (c) for several reasons. Not only is it something for which there is no easy solution (especially for someone as tenacious as Spike), but I could see it as a behind-the-scenes plot as well in case JM's movie career interfered with his return to the show. It is also not _negated_ by Spike getting a soul. It's entirely possible that he could have believed that once he had a soul that his feelings about Buffy would change, such as wanting to stay away from her for her own good.

So one could argue that this is what Spike really wanted and that the cave demon either fulfilled his desire in a really "be careful what you wish for" kind of way, or that it knew that no matter what he wanted to believe or said he wanted to do, he really did want to be worthy of her.

Or he could have just wanted a soul. But the question to me was, what do the cave demons get out of granting wishes? Clearly it or they are very powerful if they can re-ensoul a vampire. The series never refers to them again or explains anything about them so we can't say how Spike heard of them or what they're known for. But it seems to me pretty unlikely that they're either hit men for hire or tech specialists. 

My assumption about the trials is that they were done to avoid being overrun with people clamoring for wish fulfillment. But one would also assume that the demons get _something_ out of the whole process. It could be as simple as a sadistic pleasure in watching their petitioners struggle and suffer. The higher the stakes, the more those coming to them are willing to endure.

I would think though that it wouldn't be all that difficult for them to satisfy that need if it were all they wanted. After all, in Angel S1, the episode "The Ring" shows that it's quite possible to get people and demons to fight to the death without having to grant wishes.

While I have no evidence for this one way or another, I think there's something else at play, perhaps the satisfaction of seeing an individual _transformed_. Season 6 has been criticized often for Willow's storyline which was an intentional drug addiction metaphor. I don't know as I've ever seen Spike's resouling spoken of in the same terms though, even though Willow and Buffy were paralleled throughout the season and there's no question that she and Spike were engaged in a mutually obsessive dance. Although Spike hasn't stopped caring about Buffy any more than Willow has lost her taste for magic, during S7 both take a less selfish approach in expressing the issues at their core. They don't seem transformed so much as they are _curbed_.

Yet what Spike asks of the cave demon is: 

"So, you give me what I want. Make me what I was."

Some have rightly pointed out that re-ensouling Spike does not actually meet the terms of this wish because Spike was neither made human again nor had he previously been a souled demon. If the cave demon had made him human again he would certainly have been transformed, but he would perhaps not have fulfilled the second part of his wish "...so Buffy can get what she deserves."

What Buffy needed in S7 was not another human ally. What she needed was what she got: a demon under better control of himself, one who could put aside his own needs and wishes in favor of hers (if not that of others), and who had the strength to both wear the amulet and help her close the hellmouth. And apparently only a Spike altered by his soul could have done the last part.

So I find it interesting to speculate that the cave demons are, specifically, transformational demons rather than merely wish granters, and it is for this particular skill that they're sought out.


	2. What are Vampires and Souls?

As the Buffyverse developed, the issue of souls and soulessness became increasingly muddled. In Buffy's early seasons the soul was presented as a form of morality leash on vampires, though its actual definition was a little hazy. As the Buffyverse expanded, particularly on Angel, the mix of demons and humans up to no good made it quite obvious that souls were no guarantee of good behavior, nor was their absence a guarantee of violence and evil deeds. So why is it that the issue of souls for vampires is so key to the presence of morality? 

Canon has never given us a direct explanation of what vampires are. Given how they're created they would seem to be a kind of blood parasite that animates the body but leaves the brain largely intact. However, during Angel's trip to Pylea it became clear that the creature within has its own appearance and solid form, it's not merely some kind of demon nanite. So perhaps it is that vampires are a kind of weak shapeshifter who only partially transform the human host when feeding or, sometimes, fighting but who normally find it too difficult to maintain a cohesive solid form. It wouldn't be the only one, since we've seen other sorts of human infections by demons, and in at least some of those cases the demon is destroyed when it is forced out of the human body. Apparently such demons use human bodies to exist within an otherwise incompatible environment. 

So perhaps an environmental incompatibility explains why vampires inhabit a human body long-term. However vampires take it much farther than that -- people need to be reminded throughout the Buffy and Angel series that an individual inhabited by a vampire is no longer the same person, because it is often not apparent. As we saw with Sunday's pack of vampires in S4's "The Freshman", vampires often live very much like humans even when no humans are present. 

One has to assume there would be an evolutionary advantage to masquerading as a human. The way that vampires hunt suggests what that advantage may be -- vampires can live surrounded by their prey, and they have the benefit of camouflage even when they're gathered together in numbers. While some predators exist mostly in isolation there are others who hunt together in packs and have complex social interactions. There's no reason to think that demons couldn't be the same. In fact, the weaker the predator the more sense it makes that they would band together to hunt. 

Although Illyria initially calls vampires half-breeds, she is speaking to Angel and Spike when she does so, two vampires who are indeed two creatures at once. So perhaps more importantly in "Time Bomb" she says of vampires:

"Do you know what you were when I was young? You were the muck at our feet. We called you 'the ooze that eats itself'. You were pretty at night. You sparkled, and you stank. You still stink of it!"

The "you" there seems more likely to refer to the demons themselves and, whatever else her statement indicates, it's pretty clear that vampire demons were very low on the pecking order when it came to demon powers. (The implication that vampires were ooze also suggests that, whatever the form we later see, holding a solid form is difficult for them, hence the usefulness of human bodies). Her statement also suggests that vampires were either in such hunger or were so violent by nature that they mindlessly preyed on one another in their early form and/or multiplied too rapidly to be able to sustain themselves in their environment. 

Certainly large numbers of predators hunting together in the same area can be a big problem if the main population group you feed on is neither large nor fast breeding. (Humans are definitely on the high end of the biological scale when it comes to gestation period and time to reach adulthood). But being able to go unnoticed allows for far more success because the hunted group can't quickly recognize the danger in their midst and stays put instead of scattering or fighting back.

It also may have become important because taking on the human form tempered the demon nature even without a soul. Vampires are clearly influenced by the interests and lives of their human hosts: they mimic humans more than other demons. They may also develop the capability for long-range planning, living in hierarchical groups, and engaging in other things besides simply carnage and feeding, largely as a result of the human's hard-wired behavior.

As we've heard at various points, and witnessed during Angel's transformation in Pylea, the demon expresses itself as a fledgling by being dumb and reckless and can't, in its natural state, even communicate with speech. Older vampires are more likely to be cautious and planners, are less likely to give in to hunger and more likely to use violence tactically. They are also adaptable, another human trait. They may feed without killing, either for reasons of convenience or subterfuge (as we saw of Spike's minions in "Harsh Light of Day") or even long-term as a form of survival. As discussed in S5's "Into the Woods":

ANYA: Oh, that's been going on for centuries. Humans hire vampires to feed off them, they, well, you know, they-they get off on the rush.

GILES: And the ... hazards of the underworld can become addictive to ... some people.

XANDER: Why don't the vampires just kill 'em?

ANYA: Because they get cash, hot and cold running blood, and ... they don't leave any corpses behind so they don't get hunted.

As Giles points out, not all vampires can or do stick to the plan, but they have clearly made such plans over the centuries. 

This pattern of human adaptation somewhat reverses itself when they become very old. The case of the Master established that the older vampires are, the less human they _look_ and possibly, the less interested they are in blending in with humans. This could be due to the fact that such vampires have become so well established in their surroundings, and so wealthy in the trappings of human power, that they no longer need to rely on camouflage to thrive. The human life loses its appeal to the demon, especially after it's had considerable time to alter the original human mental patterns. It could also be that its ability to manifest itself physically increases as a result of its greater power.

Younger vamps though apparently need to utilize the knowledge and instincts of their human hosts quickly if they're to survive long-term. Assuming that there's minimal higher order thinking of its own, the parasitic demon within takes on all the characteristics of the original human as a result of its memories and established neural pathways. In some ways it is very much the same person, just with very different priorities.

So then what happens when the human soul returns? 

**The Nature of Souls**

What interests me about Spike's early S7 appearance was whether his experience was actually portrayed as being different from Angel's. In Angel S5, the writers hang a lantern on this question with Angel complaining bitterly of the long time he'd struggled with his soul whereas Spike spent a few weeks moaning in a basement and then was fine. 

Yet the flashbacks of Angel we've seen post-soul were actually of Angel being either deceptive about his adjustment or simply seeming miserable, not someone incapacitated by the experience. So although he was wrestling with his conscience for a long time it's hard to say if or when he hit some sort of turning point with it.

When S7 begins Spike is being actively tormented by The First which, when it happens to Angel in S3, also makes him hallucinate, seem out of control, and finally suicidal in a relatively short period of time. I don't know as we're ever told how long Spike was alone beneath the school before he was discovered. But it is clear that he's left there mostly on his own for at least a week or more. What's not clear is what his experience would have been like if The First hadn't been present.

I think that, however profound the internal struggle, it wouldn't have been that debilitating for either him or Angel for that long. It's only 2 years since Angel was re-souled that he attempts to rejoins his vampire family in China, having apparently decided that he can function as before despite the shared body he now has. Spike somehow makes his way back across continents to reach Sunnydale within a period of months, or even less, after he is re-souled. The Sunnydale events in the last few episodes of S6 clearly occur within a matter of days whereas Spike would just as clearly have needed to take longer to locate and journey to the cave demons, even if the trials themselves took only a day or two. So although those scenes were interwoven in the episodes, I don't believe they could have been synchronous. 

The point being, what effect does the soul actually have once it's returned? My assumption is that the soul is not just some mystical conscience, which is the main thing about it discussed in canon. Rather, it is the consciousness of the human being who was once connected to that physical form. Although for practical purposes in Buffy and Angel the soul has been used as a restraining anchor on the demon, I suspect that some people's souls wouldn't be terribly effective in that regard.

It is also declared, possibly at multiple times in the Buffyverse canon, that demons do not have souls. Yet many are depicted as having consciousness, and some demons are very similar to humans, even capable of interbreeding with them, so why wouldn't they have a soul as well? I'm going to explain it as having to do with a simple difference in terminology about post-death consciousness distribution. Demons automatically go to hell dimensions whereas human souls may undergo a selection process that determines their final destination. (As for human-demon hybrids, who knows? Yet there seemed to be no indication that Cordelia lost her soul as a result of being made part demon nor that Doyle lacked one, so perhaps any human part undergoes the same selection process).

The "why" of the difference in consciousness distribution is trickier. However it would seem to be tied up with some kind of cosmic balance that is central to the stability of universes. The Powers That Be seem to be directly concerned with issues of balance but they're not the only ones who are aware of its effects.

As we hear in S7's "Showtime": 

BELJOXA'S EYE: The mystical forces surrounding the chosen line have become irrevocably altered, become unstable, vulnerable.

Athough Giles calls the creator an "oracle" it says quite clearly that 

BELJOXA'S EYE: The eye sees not the future, only the truth of the now and before.

So the oracle's power is to see things unseen by others, not prediction. As their discussion deals directly with the issue of Buffy's latest death and resurrection, clearly passage back and forth out of death and life dimensions is problematic and there are restrictions on making a return permanent. For example, while Lilah's seems able to go back and forth at the end of Angel S4, she does not show up again in S5. She doesn't simply leave hell to take on a new existence on our human dimensional plane. There is also another person who has been back from death -- Darla. When she returns in Angel S2, she is fully human. 

LINDSEY: Looks like our Darla was a working girl in the New World. Syphilis was what she was dying from when she was human. - Now she's human again. Kind of picking up where she left off. Of course, today something like that could be cleared up with a few antibiotics - if you catch it in time. We're about a month and - what? 400 years too late?

So when her form was restored whatever magic gave her life again began to lose the ability to keep her alive, and the disease that took her life reasserted itself. Presumably had Buffy not died a mystical death the second time, she too would eventually have died again. That mystical factor is also, presumably, the reason she came back with her Slayer power intact instead of simply as a regular human.

So it seems likely that in the Buffyverse, while there are breaches across the realms of life and death, and human and demon dimensions, these are kept to a minimum for the purpose of universal stability. So it could be that there is nothing particularly special about human consciousness versus demon consciousness insofar as it reflects the essence of an individual -- the labeling is all about the sorting process that takes place. But there is a bigger implication when a human consciousness returns from a death dimension in a permanent way.


	3. The Micro and Macro of Balance

**Re-Integration**

We know of at least three human souls that were brought back from death and re-united with the physical body a vampire had taken over -- Angel, Darla, and Spike. As mentioned earlier Darla returned fully human, so the demon who had killed her did not get pulled back. Instead, Darla was revamped later by Dru.

One question I have about vampires is whether they are all the same demon (essentially, clones) or if each demon is somehow unique apart from its human host. It does not seem likely, for example, that _the same_ demon who was killed in Buffy S1 is somehow restored to Darla's body once she's revamped in Angel S2. But if the vampire parasite just creates clones of itself when it finds a human   
host, the question becomes somewhat irrelevant. Darla's human brain retained the memory of its life as a demon because the physical form was restored from its point of destruction (in Buffy S1) but with the original human inhabitant restored from _its_ demise in 1609. 

Once Darla is revamped, the new demon parasite steps in to take over her body and mind just as it would with any other human host. (It's also possible, since Drusilla is Darla's second sire, that the demon is largely the same because it comes from the same line as the original. But the possible relevance of vampire lineage is a discussion for another day!) 

However in Angel and Spike's cases, their bodies are not simply swapped out by first a demon, then a human, then demon again. Rather, the body becomes shared by both human and demon, something which would inevitably, one would imagine, lead to a power struggle. While it is not one where the human is able to expel the demon, it does seem to be one where the human seems to have the upper hand. 

There is, no doubt, a strong resistance to the occurrence, particularly with Angel when it has yet to be voluntary. Although Spike never speaks of himself in a dual way, Angel does on a number of occasions, quite aside from the literal difference in his name. One of the earliest is in S2's "The Dark Age" when Angel gets infected with Eyghon but forces it out of his body:

ANGEL: I've had a demon inside me for a couple hundred years... just waitin' for a good fight. 

BUFFY: Winner and still champion.

Presumably part of the reason the battle with Eyghon was so short (though it didn't look particularly pleasant) is that both human and demon who already shared the body were both in agreement that they wanted the intruder out. 

However it does make sense to me that the human is more likely to be able to control the demon if it wants to. The human is the natural resident of that form, even if the demon has had control of it for a long time. Moreover, we've already established that the vampire demon is naturally predisposed to following habits and impulses the human has developed, and that it's more likely to give form to desires the human has repressed than to introduce entirely new ones. For example, the killing of one's family is common for new vampires -- and even among humans the most likely people to kill us are our families or others we are close to. 

Nevertheless it strikes me as a risky proposition by the Romani to have resouled Angel as a punishment. Without having known the original human host, they were taking a chance that he hadn't already been a killer in his human days. On the other hand there was little doubt that having a shared body would lead to some kind of internal dissent, and, given that he was already a mass murderer of some renown perhaps they considered it a small risk. 

Spike, on the other hand, knew quite well what sort of person he had been and would have had at least some idea of what to expect his human's reaction to be to everything his body had done since his death. So if he did want to change, gaining a soul could have been expected to work.

**Balance and Stress Fractures**

Earlier I discussed the possibility that any transition back from a death dimension is either unable to succeed on a permanent basis, or carries serious repercussions should it succeed. I think the key clue for why the balance is important lies in Angel's return from hell in S3.

In S7 Beljoxa's Eye talks about the The First's return as connected with Buffy's return to life. It's in S3 when we are introduced to The First and Angel is targeted. In S7, it is Spike who is manipulated. These appear to be deliberate connections, so my hunch is that the maintenance of "balance" in the distribution of souls between heaven and hell, and life and death, is important in keeping The First in check. 

BELJOXA'S EYE: It cannot be fought, it cannot be killed. The First Evil has been and always will be. Since before the universe was born, long after there is nothing else, it will go on.

Yet for such an eternal entity, The First seems relatively powerless in the human sphere or else, given Buffy's line of work, we should be running into it all the time. Instead, its appearances are all tied to people who have defied life and death. And we have another instance of the importance of the dimensional barriers in S6's "After Life":

WILLOW: Think of it like, the world doesn't like you getting something for free, and we asked for this huge gift. Buffy. A-and so the world said, 'fine, but if you have that, you have to take this too.' And it made the demon...I think it's out of phase with this dimension. Like, its consciousness is here, but, but its body is caught in the ether between existing and not existing.

The idea of balance is expressed here by the actual _creation_ of an entity to restore the balance of Buffy's life moving back across life and death dimensions. Not only that but note the separation of body and consciousness that Willow points out. I think the issue of physical transference across dimensions is also important, as this entity seems to have piggybacked on Buffy's reanimation but is unable to manifest in its own form. And we should remember that when Angel both was sent to hell and brought back form it, both the demon and human consciousness _and the physical_ form made the trip. So breaking that barrier, especially in a solid form, seems to create a weakening in that barrier which centers around the entity that went back and forth.

While Buffy's first death in S1 was enough to disrupt the Slayer line, it was not enough to trigger The First. This isn't surprising since her death was brief and not unlike what many humans have experienced over time. Her return in S6 was very different. It was neither a typical human death, nor was it brief, and both the human consciousness AND body were restored, just like Angel's in S3. 

I think this balance was first upset when a human soul was brought back to life to reside in Angel's body during his initial re-souling. While Sahjhan's meddling in Angel S3 indicates that prophecies can't always be counted on, there are a number of them revolving around Angel. His direct dealings with the Powers suggest that he is a key player for some reason. That reason might have developed because his re-souling was a chink in the wall between life, death, and the transfer back and forth of souls. While a small matter at first, its increasing mobility may have created a form of "stress fracture" over time.

Also from "After Life":

WILLOW: The demon. I-it's gonna dissipate. The only way for it to survive on this plane is if it were to kill the subject of the original spell.

It is Buffy's physical presence in the human plane that makes it possible for the demon to exist at all, it is tied to her. I think that this is equally true of Angel in "Amends" making him vulnerable to direct communication with The First.

Although in that episode Angel believes the First has returned him from hell there's nothing that confirms this idea. The only thing we get from the First is this statement when Angel decides to die.

Jenny: You're not supposed to die. This isn't the plan. But it'll do.

Why would it be equally useful to The First for Angel to die? We know that The First wants to turn Angel back to its side and particularly to kill Buffy. Both of those are understandable goals for an evil entity. Perhaps it's because Angel's physical form and human consciousness being in hell was destabilizing, enough so that he was restored to life. So if instability is a favorable thing for The First, then it would prefer for him to return there so as to further weaken that barrier.

My hunch is that Angel's significance to a future apocalypse (as believed by Wolfram & Hart) has to do with the constant loss and restitution of his soul. This happens once on Buffy but twice more on Angel, in the S1 episode "Eternity" and again in the S4 arc ending with "Orpheus." I think that this repeated movement of Angel's soul makes him a critical stress point in the effort to maintain balance and hold back The First.

**Return of The First**

After The Powers act at the end of "Amends", The First appears to retreat, only to re-emerge in S7 when it once again tortures a vampire in hopes of having it either kill Buffy or be killed itself.

In Spike's case, the body and demon consciousness hadn't gone anywhere, but yet another human soul was moved from death back to life. And this time The First could not only affect Spike directly but also began to appear to a number of people and was able to carry out a series of systematic attacks through its Bringers.

Beljoxa's Eye doesn't mention Spike, but the connection seems obvious nonetheless. The transfer of another soul back from death, especially after such a considerable period of time, is destabilizing. After all, Buffy has been alive again for some time before The First reappears. It seems that it is only once Spike is re-souled that its campaigns begin, perhaps because a sort of critical tipping point had occurred in terms of The First's ability to operate.

Which brings us back to the mysterious cave demons and their role in the human plane, and my hypothesis that they are, specifically, creatures with the power of transformation. Another way to express that was that they are demons of metamorphosis, that is a [change of form or shape, especially by witchcraft](http://www.dictionary.com/browse/metamorphoses?s=t) which might have, in the Buffyverse, a more central role in the order of their universe.

Another entity who seems clued into this activity is Skip, the demon we meet in Angel S3. He claims to work for the Powers That Be and tells Cordelia that:

Skip: "Life and death, that sort of thing, they got a handle on. Who someone chooses to love, well, that's just good old free will. See Cordelia, the visions are an ancient, powerful force. Demons are the only ones who can withstand them."

Whereas Spike and Angel are dual entities because the human was returned, Cordelia becomes part demon without losing her human side. Exploring how this affected events in Angel S4 is a long enough discussion that I'll postpone it for another time or speculation in comments. But Cordelia's transformation at the end of "Birthday" seems less likely to be the cause of imbalance as her eventual movement from one dimension to another in "Tomorrow." Skip implies to Angel in S4's "Inside Out" that her transformation and movement across dimensions facilitated the birth of Jasmine. Whether it was really Skip pulling the strings on that plan or not, it seems that he was at least able to create some powerful transformative changes and breach dimensional barriers. Is he related to the cave demons? There's no evidence of it, but they are apparently empowered to do similar things. I'll only say that Cordelia's two seasons of suffering through the visions could be seen as their own trial, and the importance to her of continuing as a seer prompted her request to Skip for a transformation.

In Ovid's The Metamorphoses, [the first story](http://www.mythencyclopedia.com/Le-Me/Metamorphoses-The.html) is about the creation of the universe, in which chaos changes into order. In the Buffyverse, the maintenance of dimensional balance is critical for keeping chaos from erupting. The significance of the physical body as a locus for dimensional weakness (as seen with Angel, Buffy, and Cordelia), and the transfer back and forth of souls (as seen in them and Spike) does seem to have some relevance in the events of S7 as well as S4 of Angel. What's more, Cordelia, Angel and Spike also hold a larger symbolic meaning when these dual-consciousness bodies and dual identities are seen as the site of ongoing struggles between the same good and evil forces at play in the larger field of the Buffyverse.


End file.
